April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the state-owned company that generates about 95 percent of South Africa’s
power, said it will do maintenance on nine units as it expects
an “extremely cold” winter season.

The company will take 2,000 megawatts of generation
capacity out of production as it can’t delay maintenance on
these aging units, Chief Executive Officer Brian Dames told
reporters in Johannesburg today. The power system will be tight
in the southern African nation’s winter, which runs from about
May to August, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba said.

“This winter will be different,” Dames said. “We will do
outage work on nine units between April and August.”

Eskom is spending about 500 billion rand ($54.1 billion)
revamping old plants and building new ones to avoid a repeat of
the January 2008 blackouts that halted mines owned by companies
including Anglo American Plc for five days and paralyzed
factories. Shortages are at similar levels now to five years
ago, threatening gold and platinum output and the nation’s 2013
growth forecast of 2.7 percent on concern that there will be
insufficient power in the approaching winter season.

Gigaba said April 11 the “country can’t afford any
delays” to the December 2013 deadline for the first generation
unit being switched on at the 91 billion-rand Medupi power
station, which will generate 4,800 megawatts of electricity once
completed. South Africa, which relies on coal for about 80
percent of its generation, is building the world’s third- and
fourth-largest power stations fired by the fuel. One megawatt is
enough to power 500 to 1,000 homes.

The country’s electricity supply has been constrained by
unreliable power imports from Mozambique, labor strikes at coal
suppliers and a faulty unit at Africa’s only nuclear power
station. South Africa imports electricity from Mozambique’s
Cahora Bassa hydro-electric power station and supply was lost
yesterday, Dames said.

A more-than two-week strike at some of Exxaro Resources
Ltd. operations earlier this year led to unplanned outages of
about 1,000 megawatts, he said.